The Divinely Guided Boot of Upward Inspiration

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

What a long, strange trip it's been

Wow.

That's all I can say right now.

Wow.

And what has stirred this spate of speechlessness, this state of awe? Is it an image of the Virgin Mary toasted into the side of my burrito? The announcement of a new electric toothbrush so technically advanced that it's sentient? Did I finally get to rub noses with Pierce Brosnan?

No, no and (sigh) no. And yet, wow.

It's simply this -

General Electric's Citizenship Report - 77 pages of fact-dense copy justifying their corporate existence based not on their profitability and fiscal soundness, nor on their ability to buy off the governing bodies of small, third-world countries in the name of productivity and cost-cutting, but on the fact that they have, essentially, done the right thing. In fact, not only have they done the right thing, but apparently they've got the right thing oozing out of their pores like a protective fog of righteous pheremones.

...Given GE's status as a management trendsetter, its tome will likely up the ante for others. The proof lies in the advance orders: GE says it...has requests for copies from rival companies looking to write their own big books of citizenship.

-- WAG newsletter

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one to wax rhapsodic about corporate writing. And GE is far from the first to put one of these things out. But they're one of the biggest.

And 77 pages of "we're doing the right thing and our stock is kickin' it" is a hell of a heady brew for the for the rest of the corporate world to wake up and smell, especially when their stockholders begin hearing about it and reading it and sending emails to the main office with questions like "Why aren't we doing this?" in the subject line.

In other words, it's not the honking great paperweight of dead trees that's got me flabbergasted. It's the fact that I've lived to see the day when the big blue-chip corporations find such actions - and the egregious display of proof of such - absolutely vital to remain competitive, viable and functional in today's reality.

And they're right. It is. Glancing over their stuff, the first thought that bubbled up through my consciousness was "I gotta buy some of their stock." Cha-ching!

Doing what's right really, really works. And GE's proof that the big guys in the corner office are really, really beginning to get that.

Wow.

Posted at 10:18 pm by sonipitts
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Bleak beauty

Okay, call me old-fashioned, but this is just sickening.

Via Boing Boing, here is a beauty pagent site that holds a contest for "Photoshop enhanced" pagent shots.

Two things:
One - Is it just me or do these photos make your hair stand on end, too? At first, I thought it was some sort of parody site, that maybe the enhancements were supposed to mimic some jokey- kitchy figurine series that I hadn't heard of. Reading further, however, I was disabused of this notion by the guidelines for the Free Monthly Photo Contest rules. This is serious folks, not a joke (check out a professional photog that makes a living doing these). At this point, I am just ill. These people are so far gone into their own little world that they don't even recognize how creepy this all is - these photos really represent their ideal of beauty. God have mercy on the souls of their children.

Second - look at the little girls, the really young ones. Now, I'm not even going to offer a sliver of excuse for paedophiles doing what they do, so don't even go there on me. But can anyone say "live bait?" I'm sorry, but you dress grade-schoolers like this and you can almost forgive some poor souls with questionable or clouded sanity for not recognizing that they are not ripe for picking.

Now, I have nothing against natural beauty and the illustrative artistic representation of such. But my God, some of these children (both on this site and the photog linked above) look tastier than a $500 whore. And the $5.00 cousins of those expensive treats are about the only place I've seen eyes that blank and that empty. Excuse me while I try to avoid reprocessing my lunch.

Is this what we've come to in America - that the ideals of beauty have become so disturbingly twisted that the slightest hint of personality, life, individuality, asymetry, depth or spark are such a black spot on beauty that only digital manipulation can offer absolutions for the sin of individual expression?

Are we so hung up on sexual allure as the hallmark of youth and attractiveness that even in pagents where the competitors are too young to go to school, the difference between a national winner and second best is the ability to make a Madison Avenue call girl look positively low-rent?

And are we so lost in our own fear of age, 'ugliness' and death that we would force an entire generation to grow up thinking that this unspeakable parody of attractiveness is what they have to create, personify and maintain in order to be considered "winners" and to deserve the approval, attention and adoration of others?

I was wrong. This is a parody site. A parody of all that is good, beautiful and right about childhood, self-worth and love. Unfortunately, the joke is on us.

Posted at 01:39 am by sonipitts
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Friday, July 08, 2005

More on "you are who you hang with"

From Theresa Frasche's blog Me 'N' Jack (where she details her process of working through success phenome Jack Canfield's book, Success Principles) is this insightful post on how our "people environment" affects who we are, and who we can be:

Drop Out of the "Ain't It Awful" Club

I learned a long time ago that hanging around toxic people was damaging and that no matter how it seemed, I always had a choice.

Posted at 05:58 pm by sonipitts
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Nothing to hide, nothing to lose

From my inbox, some words of wisdom (and a prayer) on the value and strength of vulnerability and transparency.

"I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more." --Chief Joseph, NEZ PERCE

We are as sick as our secrets. Our ego takes over control of our lives and when that happens our minds get very sick. Then we hurt people and our minds will always justify our actions. Our minds will give us rationalization and excuses that we are justified in doing what we are doing.

My Creator, Let me live today with an open heart. Let me realize to be vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness. Let me realize the power of an open heart. Let me be available to truth. If I get into trouble, let me hear the whisper of your guidance. Let me make heart decisions and let my head catch up to that decision.

Posted at 12:22 pm by sonipitts
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Would you eat this?

So, here's a dilemma for us veggies -

Burgers from a Lab? US Study Says it's Possible

While NASA engineers have grown fish tissue in lab dishes, no one has seriously proposed a way to grow meat on commercial levels.

But a new study conducted by University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny and his colleagues describe two possible ways to do it.

If you're a vegetarian, what do you think? And even if you're not a veggie, would you be interested? As for myself, I'm staying firmly on the fence on this one.

The objections I have to meat that this would solve are two-fold: firstly, there's that whole "why should something die for my dinner when I can eat myself into nutritionally well-rounded morbid obesity without getting blood on my hands" issue. I mean, to kill something not because you need to in order to survive but simply because you'd rather eat them than whatever else is at hand, strikes me as, among other things, supremely arrogant, cruel and hubristic beyond belief. To the extent that vat-grown meat obviates the need to either kill or to inhumanely care for sentient, feeling animals, I'm good with it.

Secondly, being personally quite senstive to antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals that are necessitated by the conditions of modern-day factory-farming, by not eating meat I avoid being sick all the time. Really - I used to get strep throat on a reliable and regular basis several times a year. Since I quit eating meat, which has been well over 10 years, I haven't had it once. And anyone who's ever suffered through a bout of strep knows that that by itself has paid the price of admission to the veggie clan. Since vat-raised meat obviates the need to keep whole animals upright and breathing in decidedly unhealthy conditions, that would seem to clear up that.

However, another reason I don't eat meat is because of it's effect on my body - raised homocysteine levels, overly-high protein levels, cholesterol, etc. And I'd have to see what the long-term nutritional impact of vat meat (sounds yummy, eh) on a real human population is before making that sort of decision.

I do miss some of the flavors and textures of real meat and wouldn't mind having a non-death version to turn to when veggie patties just aren't cutting it. But most of these latter health issues are intrinsic to the nature meat itself (although amplified by inhumane treatment and factory-farm procedures), so I'm not holding my breath for a safe and painless return to the land of barbeque riblets.

So what's your take on the issue? How do you feel about the prospect of meat that never walked the earth? Do you even think that they can come up with something that tastes like real meat, and not like something that was concocted with a Young Scientist kit? Is the whole question moot, given the slow process of public acceptance of test-tube comestibles? Is this just going to be just another a low-quality, low-value, under-researched and over-processed food handed out as commodities to the poor while the rich continue to chow down on rare Kobe steaks made from real slaughtered animals?

Only time will tell, but I can't wait to see what develops with this, er, meaty issue.

Posted at 12:15 pm by sonipitts
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Thursday, July 07, 2005

One use for those over-built Jaycee halls

"Just imagine how good it would feel if we all got together once in a while in large public gatherings and admitted that we don't know why we are alive, that nobody knows for sure if there's a higher being who created us, and that nobody really knows what the hell's going on here." -- Wes Nisker, meditation teacher, Inquiring Mind (Spring 2005)

Posted at 12:05 pm by sonipitts
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Parking lot...of DOOM!

Although this article on parking lot pollution of run-off water was written about tests in Austin, the fact is if your town has parking lots, this is happening in (and to) your back yard:

A new study by the city of Austin and the U.S. Geological Survey suggests that coal-tar sealant, the shiny black stuff that goes on parking lots to protect asphalt from the elements, may be a major source of water pollution in Austin.

Scientists from the city's Watershed Protection and Development Review Department had been studying PAH hot spots since the late 1990s, but it wasn't until 2001 that they started collaborating with the USGS. The partnership began, Van Metre recalled, when city scientists approached the USGS with sediment from local waterways showing levels of PAH contamination that Van Metre found literally unbelievable.

"Our first reaction was we thought their data were wrong," he said. "We thought there must be a lab problem, the numbers were so high."

Gee - that whole pave-the-world development for progress thing is looking less and less like a run for eternal prosperity and more and more like a set of "let's see how fast we can kill ourselves and everything around us" wind sprints.

Posted at 12:02 pm by sonipitts
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Clean shave

Extreme environmentalism or common sense tinged with machismo? You decide:

In response to a query about the environmental considerations of using disposable razor blades, environmental advice columnist Umbra Fisk responds thusly:

Your argument for remaining beard-free is unimpeachable. But you must stop using disposable plastic razors. I don't need to spell out the reasons: the source of plastic, the likely distant country of origin, the effect on the waste stream. Here in the U.S., 2 billion disposable razors are purchased annually. That's a lot of space in the landfill.

Besides the environmental concern, David, there's, well, the dorkiness. You want a date, you want the date to lead to something, and at some point the date might see you shave. Shaving is sexy, and a choice opportunity to impress that special man or woman with your suave masculinity. Plastic disposables say, "I think little about personal grooming" -- not to mention, "I'm cheap" -- and you have little margin for this type of drastic error.

Intrigued? Instructions for more or less safely resurrecting the lost art of straight razor grooming.

Posted at 11:49 am by sonipitts
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The sum of your life

I was reading Pat O'Bryan's e-newsletter today and he was talking about creating a "treasure map" (where you paste up pictures representative of your dreams as a way to visualize and attract such things).When he got to the section where he was discussing his financial dreams, he mentioned a stunning little mathematical/metaphysical tidbit that I just had to share with you. He wrote about a success-delineation formula he came across that said that your income is the average of the incomes of your 5 closest friends. Shocked, but curious, he did the math - and discovered that it was true.

Interesting.

Of course, we all tend to hang out with others in similar circumstances - it's just human nature - so of course it's very likely that all of your friends are going to have similar incomes to yourself and so when those incomes are averaged, it will be close to your own. However, on the flip side, it is also fairly common knowledge that we tend to behave upward or downward to the expectations of those around us (we behave far differently around our tailgate-party friends than we do around our dinner-at-the-boss' colleagues). And it's old news that to get better at a sport, you don't play within your point-group - you play with people who can wipe the floor with you on your best days.

Ergo, the theory goes, if we take the initiative to hang around people who are richer, more successful, more enlightened, more productive, more whatever it is we want to be, then some of that is bound to rub off as we learn from them and adjust our behaviors and thoughts to harmonize with our surroundings.

Of course, not all of us want to be filthy rich and celebrity famous - I, for one, want to be able to go to the store without a bodyguard, thank you very much - do you know how much one of those guys eats? But most of us want to be at least financially independent, personally successful and passionate about what we do and how we live our lives.

So take a look around you. Who are you hanging out with? What are their motivations, their habits, their incomes, their outlooks and their ratios of intrinsic vs expressed potential? Does your posse represent the ideal you, or could it be holding you back from who you want to be?

Now, I'm not advocating a "ditch your true friends in search of greener pastures elsewhere" scorched earth approach. That's just wrong. But I am advocating a "ditch the loser habit-buddies you hang around with for no other reason than familiarity, superiority and comfort" get-your-act-together approach. Too many people hang around what I call "the easy crowd" - around them it's easy to fit in, easy to live up to what few expectations they have and easy to look like a mountain in the midst of such level terrain. But as one inspired motivational speaker once said, "If you are the smartest person in your group, you need a new group."

Truth is, in the game of life as in any other, if you want to improve your skills you've got to get out of the habit of playing people who make you look like Michael Jordan and start hanging around people who can take your ass to the cleaners on a regular basis. Because only the people who are already there have the ability to help you move up into the next tier.

Posted at 11:18 am by sonipitts
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005

On legislating morality

If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral. -- Samuel P. Ginder, US navy captain

Posted at 04:18 pm by sonipitts
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